PolitiFact’s Bill Adair has a recurring fact-checking role on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” hosted by Chuck Todd. I think yesterday’s (June 28) was the first one I’ve watched; while Adair does a pretty good job vocalizing the reasons for the rulings, he did say something (actually two things, one of which I’ll address in my next post) that merited this post.
Adair stated that only chain emails beat out Michele Bachmann as the “least truthful”. I wrinkled my nose at that statement (as something someone looking for a statement to fact-check might do) and said to myself, I don’t think that’s true. I recalled that the e-mails were all lumped together on PolitiFact’s “Personalities” page, regardless of political affiliation. There were 89 through the end of 2010, and to get a more accurate read on the Politi-Score, it we necessary for me to categorize them as to whether they were from Democrats, Republicans, or they were “unknown”. As it turned out, almost half (44) were in that “unknown” category.
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| Bachmann and chain e-mail total PF rulings and scores at the end of 2010. |
Above is a screen-print of my filtered Excel spreadsheet reflecting Bachmann’s and the separated chain e-mail Politi-Scores at the end of 2010. The second to last column reflects the Politi-Score (the last column "DB Score" is the Daily Beast score, discussed below). Bachmann was way ahead of the chain e-mails because at that time she had 7 Falses and 6 Pants on Fire. In the Politi-Scoring methodology that means she didn’t even make a positive score, because False is assigned a zero and Pants on Fire is assigned a -25. Because among the chain e-mails there were 21 scoring from True to Barely True, only the e-mails of “unknown” affiliation scored a negative, although the negative wasn’t as high as Bachmann’s.
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| Current Bachmann and chain e-mail total PF rulings and scores. |
Fast forward to the end of June of 2011, and re-score: Bachmann finally got PolitiFact rulings of a True along with 2 Half Trues and 5 Barely Trues. It raised her from a negative Politi-Score of -11.5 to a positive of 12.5. For the chain e-mails more False and Pants on Fire were added. In Politi-Score terms (see second to last column) , currently Bachmann is in a TIE with the collective chain e-mails at 12.5 each.
The other way to look at this is using the Daily Beast scoring method which skews the scores higher for the False and Pants on Fire categories (so the higher the score, the “more” the lying). I’ve included those here as well (last column): at the end of 2010, Bachmann, at a Daily Beast score of 3.92, was still ahead of the collective chain e-mails with 3.35. She was ahead of the Politi-Score of the Republican/Conservative category as well, at 3.92 versus 3.75. But the current score shows Bachmann pulling down her score to a 2.9, with the chain e-mails now in the lead at 3.5. The Democrat/Liberal chain e-mails scored below her at 2.3, however.
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| PF does not break down chain e-mails for political affiliation. |
So for Bill Adair to say that the current collective chain e-mails are ahead of Michele Bachmann in the “liar, liar” category contains, as they would say in their rulings, some caveats. If you average the scores more proportionately as I have, Bachmann was Number One in Lying at the end of 2010 (for ALL rulings accumulated to that point), and she is in Tie right now with ALL chain e-mails. If you use the Daily Beast scoring method which tilts the scoring to the “lying” side of the Truth-O-Meter, she comes in second to ALL chain e-mails. However, she lies more than those chain emails categorized as Democrat/Liberal. If you look at PolitiFact’s mobile app, it would appear that chain e-mails are well ahead, because of the dominance of the Pants on Fire category.
So I give Bill Adair a “Half True” on this one. His statement “is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.” In an “equal” scoring method, for those who’ve garnered over 10 rulings, Bachmann was Number One and well ahead of the others at the end of 2010. Currently, she is undisputed Number One as an office holder (some scoring methods leave out groups and chain e-mails). In certain respects, it can be argued that the Daily Beast distorts the scoring with its method, as I noted in my previous post. And if you break down the chain e-mails for political affiliation, Bachman scores higher with “lying” than the category of those chain e-mails associated with Democrats/Liberals.
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